Beyond GDP and Back: What Is the Value-Added by Additional Components of Welfare Measurement?

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective perceptions. To explore the additional information of these indicators, we analyze data on the macro level from the German Federal Statistical Office combined with micro level data from the German SOEP (1991-2008) on the personal work situation and subjective feelings concerning several aspects of life. Employing the indicators suggested by the Stiglitz Report, we find that much of the variation in many well-being measures can indeed be captured well by the hard economic indicators as used in the literature, especially by GDP and the unemployment rate. This suggests that the hard indicators are still a reasonable and quite robust gauge of well-being of a country. And yet, we also see that these correlations are far from perfect, thus giving considerable hope that there is room for a broader statistical reporting.Stiglitz Commission, Stiglitz Report, Beyond GDP, welfare measurement, life satisfaction

Beyond GDP and Back: What is the Value-added by Additional Components of Welfare Measurement?

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective perceptions. To explore the additional information of these indicators, we analyze data on the macro level from the German Federal Statistical Office combined with micro level data from the German SOEP (1991–2008) on the personal work situation and subjective feelings concerning several aspects of life. Employing the indicators suggested by the Stiglitz Report, we find that much of the variation in many well-being measures can indeed be captured well by the hard economic indicators as used in the literature, especially by GDP and the unemployment rate. This suggests that the hard indicators are still a reasonable and quite robust gauge of well-being of a country. And yet, we also see that these correlations are far from perfect, thus giving considerable hope that there is room for a broader statistical reporting.Stiglitz Commission; Stiglitz Report; beyond GDP; welfare measurement; life satisfaction

Beyond GDP and Back: What is the Value-Added by Additional Components of Welfare Measurement?

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective perceptions. To explore the additional information of these indicators, we analyze data on the macro level from the German Federal Statistical Office combined with micro level data from the German SOEP (1991-2008) on the personal work situation and subjective feelings concerning several aspects of life. Employing the indicators suggested by the Stiglitz Report, we find that much of the variation in many well-being measures can indeed be captured well by the hard economic indicators as used in the literature, especially by GDP and the unemployment rate. This suggests that the hard indicators are still a reasonable and quite robust gauge of well-being of a country. And yet, we also see that these correlations are far from perfect, thus giving considerable hope that there is room for a broader statistical reporting.Stiglitz Commission, Stiglitz Report, Beyond GDP, Welfare Measurement, Life Satisfaction

Beyond GDP and Back: What is the Value-Added by Additional Components of Welfare Measurement?

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective perceptions. To explore the additional information of these indicators, we analyze data on the macro level from the German Federal Statistical Office combined with micro level data from the German SOEP (1991-2008) on the personal work situation and subjective feelings concerning several aspects of life. Employing the indicators suggested by the Stiglitz Report, we find that much of the variation in many well-being measures can indeed be captured well by the hard economic indicators as used in the literature, especially by GDP and the unemployment rate. This suggests that the hard indicators are still a reasonable and quite robust gauge of well-being of a country. And yet, we also see that these correlations are far from perfect, thus giving considerable hope that there is room for a broader statistical reporting.Stiglitz Commission, Stiglitz Report, Beyond GDP, welfare measurement, life satisfaction

Temporal regularity effects on pre-attentive and attentive processing of deviance

Temporal regularity allows predicting the temporal locus of future information thereby potentially facilitating cognitive processing. We applied event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate how temporal regularity impacts pre-attentive and attentive processing of deviance in the auditory modality. Participants listened to sequences of sinusoidal tones differing exclusively in pitch. The inter-stimulus interval (ISI) in these sequences was manipulated to convey either isochronous or random temporal structure. In the pre-attentive session, deviance processing was unaffected by the regularity manipulation as evidenced in three event-related-potentials (ERPs): mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and reorienting negativity (RON). In the attentive session, the P3b was smaller for deviant tones embedded in irregular temporal structure, while the N2b component remained unaffected. These findings confirm that temporal regularity can reinforce cognitive mechanisms associated with the attentive processing of deviance. Furthermore, they provide evidence for the dynamic allocation of attention in time and dissociable pre-attentive and attention-dependent temporal processing mechanisms

Why pitch sensitivity matters : event-related potential evidence of metric and syntactic violation detection among spanish late learners of german

Event-related potential (ERP) data in monolingual German speakers have shown that sentential metric expectancy violations elicit a biphasic ERP pattern consisting of an anterior negativity and a posterior positivity (P600). This pattern is comparable to that elicited by syntactic violations. However, proficient French late learners of German do not detect violations of metric expectancy in German. They also show qualitatively and quantitatively different ERP responses to metric and syntactic violations. We followed up the questions whether (1) latter evidence results from a potential pitch cue insensitivity in speech segmentation in French speakers, or (2) if the result is founded in rhythmic language differences. Therefore, we tested Spanish late learners of German, as Spanish, contrary to French, uses pitch as a segmentation cue even though the basic segmentation unit is the same in French and Spanish (i.e., the syllable). We report ERP responses showing that Spanish L2 learners are sensitive to syntactic as well as metric violations in German sentences independent of attention to task in a P600 response. Overall, the behavioral performance resembles that of German native speakers. The current data suggest that Spanish L2 learners are able to extract metric units (trochee) in their L2 (German) even though their basic segmentation unit in Spanish is the syllable. In addition Spanish in contrast to French L2 learners of German are sensitive to syntactic violations indicating a tight link between syntactic and metric competence. This finding emphasizes the relevant role of metric cues not only in L2 prosodic but also in syntactic processing

Beyond GDP and Back: what is the value-added by additional components of welfare measurement?

"Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective perceptions. To explore the additional information of these indicators, we analyze data on the macro level from the German Federal Statistical Office combined with micro level data from the German SOEP (1991-2008) on the personal work situation and subjective feelings concerning several aspects of life. Employing the indicators suggested by the Stiglitz Report, we find that much of the variation in many well-being measures can indeed be captured well by the hard economic indicators as used in the literature, especially by GDP and the unemployment rate. This suggests that the hard indicators are still a reasonable and quite robust gauge of well-being of a country. And yet, we also see that these correlations are far from perfect, thus giving considerable hope that there is room for a broader statistical reporting." (author's abstract

Combining X-ray CT and 3D printing technology to produce microcosms with replicable, complex pore geometries

Measurements in soils have been traditionally used to demonstrate that soil architecture is one of the key drivers of soil processes. Major advances in the use of X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) afford significant insight into the pore geometry of soils, but until recently no experimental techniques were available to reproduce this complexity in microcosms. This article describes a 3D additive manufacturing technology that can print physical structures with pore geometries reflecting those of soils. The process enables printing of replicated structures, and the printing materials are suitable to study fungal growth. This technology is argued to open up a wealth of opportunities for soil biological studies

The Freshwater Information Platform: a global online network providing data, tools and resources for science and policy support

Freshwaters are among the most complex, dynamic, and diverse ecosystems globally. Despite their small share of the earth’s surface (less than 1%) they are home to over 10% of all known animal species. Biodiversity decrease in general and freshwater biodiversity decline in particular have recently received increasing attention, and various policy instruments are now targeting the conservation, protection and enhancement of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Surveillance programs as well as a variety of research projects have been producing a tremendous amount of freshwater-related information. Though there have been various attempts to build infrastructures for online collection of such data, tools and reports, they often provide only limited access to resources that can readily be extracted for conducting large scale analyses. Here, we present the Freshwater Information Platform, an open system of relevant freshwater biodiversity-related information. We provide a comprehensive overview of the platform’s core components, highlight their values, present options for their use, and discuss future developments. This is complemented by information on the platform’s current management structure, options for contributing data and research results and an outlook for the future